The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" (also known as "Like the Wind", "Blind the Wind", "Check It In, Check It Out" or "Take It In, Take It Out" after lines in fan-interpreted lyrics; acronymed as TMMSOTI or TMS) is the nickname given to an unidentified song recording, most likely composed in the 1980s.

"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet"
Song by unknown artist
Recordedc. 1984
Genre
Length2:55 (radio version)
"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" on YouTube

The song was reportedly recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcast sometime in the mid-1980s, likely during or after 1984.[1] Since 2019, this song has been the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon, with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord involved in a collaborative effort to search for the origins of the song.[1] Through the search, other unknown songs were discovered. Users have coined the term "Lostwave" to describe songs of this nature.

Background
List of songs on the BASF 4|1 tape that includes "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet", labeled as "Blind the Wind"

A man named Darius S. recorded the song from a radio program that he listened to on the West German public radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk.[1][2] He recorded the song on a cassette tape, which also included songs from XTC and The Cure. To get clean recordings of songs, Darius purposely removed dialogue from radio hosts, which is likely why the exact airplay date and the title are unknown.[3]

In 1985, Darius created a playlist consisting of the unidentified songs in his personal collection. In 2004, his older sister, Lydia H., gave him a website domain as a birthday present. He then digitized his playlist, saving the songs as .aiff and .m4a files, and used the website domain to raise awareness of his playlist.[4]

On March 18, 2007, Lydia (under the pseudonym "Anton Riedel") began her online search for the song. She originally posted on the Usenet group de.rec.musik.recherche, but later migrated to websites with song identification tools. She posted an excerpt of the song to best-of-80s.de (a German forum devoted to eighties synth-pop) and to spiritofradio.ca (a fan site dedicated to Canadian radio station CFNY-FM).[1][2]

Viral internet phenomenon

The mystery of the unidentified song gained viral popularity in 2019, when a Brazilian teenager named Gabriel da Silva Vieira began searching for the song's origin, after being informed about it by Nicolás Zúñiga of the Spanish independent record label Dead Wax Records. Gabriel uploaded the excerpt of the song to YouTube and many music-related Reddit communities, and eventually founded r/TheMysteriousSong.[5]

On May 27, 2019, Australian music news website Tone Deaf wrote the earliest article focusing on the song, with author Tyler Jenke discussing the preliminary stages of the search for the track and noting that the search was similar to a 2013 search for a song which was ultimately identified as "On the Roof" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.[6]

On July 9, 2019, American YouTuber Justin Whang posted an episode of his series Tales from the Internet discussing the song and the progress of the search up to that point. The video's release further galvanized Internet users to contribute to the effort to identify the song.[2][5] After the release of Whang's video, Reddit user u/johnnymetoo posted the complete version of the song, which he obtained from a link on one of Lydia's Usenet posts before deletion.[7]

Searchers made contact with individuals potentially pertinent to the search, such as Paul Baskerville (a disc jockey from NDR), GEMA (a German performance rights organization), and a YouTube channel named "80zforever", which posts obscure music.[1] Baskerville agreed to play the song on his then-current radio show Nachtclub on July 21, 2019.[8] Although no new leads came of it, it did make Lydia and Darius aware of the new wave of investigation, and Lydia subsequently became involved with the Reddit community in August.[8]

On July 9, 2020, Reddit user u/FlexxonMobil acquired the complete list of songs Baskerville had played on Musik Für Junge Leute in 1984 and published it on the site.[9] After some searching, users concluded that the song was not in that list, effectively ruling out the theory that Baskerville had played the song.[10] The remaining Musik Für Junge Leute playlists eventually arrived in December 2020, and after an extensive search, users concluded that the song was not played on Musik Für Junge Leute. In January 2021, the community received Der Club and Nachtclub playlists from October and November 1984, and found several songs that Darius and Lydia had taped, including those from the BASF 4|1 tape, leading users to believe the song would show up within the remaining playlists.

In late 2020, Discord user Fliere analyzed the tape recording of the song and found a 10 kHz line, which was also present on the other BASF 4|1 songs and some songs on BASF 4|2. This line was discovered to be present on virtually all NDR radio broadcasts at the time, but not on Hilversum radio broadcasts, effectively ruling out the possibility of the song being aired on any station other than NDR.[11]

On November 2, 2021, Lydia posted on Reddit that one of her sons had found a box full of tapes while renovating her apartment. One of the tapes contained a higher quality version of the song. The tape's track list was different from previous ones, though it is speculated to be made from the same recording, as it shares some of the same artifacts as the first tape.[12]

Theories

Searchers generally agree that the singer has some sort of European accent, but the specific type is unclear.[2] Some users have theorized that the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which was released in late 1983, was used in the leads.[8][13]

It has been speculated that the song was recorded in 1984, since most of the songs on the cassette tape were also released around 1984. Further evidence that supports this as being the earliest possible airing date was the Technics tape deck that he most likely used to record the song, which was manufactured in 1984 as well.[1]

Paul Baskerville, who does not remember playing the song,[2] suspects that the song was a demo recording that was played once by an NDR presenter and then thrown away.[14]

Covers and remixes

A number of covers and remixed versions of the song have been created,[4] including a cover by American band Mephisto Walz titled "Like the Wind" and released on their 2020 album All These Winding Roads.[15]

See also

References
  1. Browne, David (24 September 2019). "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  2. Jones, Alexandra Mae (2019-11-18). "Help solve a decades-long mystery: What is the name of this mysterious 80s song?". CTVNews. Archived from the original on 2023-05-24. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  3. Reeve, Tanja (30 May 2020). "Die Jagd nach dem Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Braunschweiger Zeitung. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  4. "Most Mysterious Song: Wie die Suche nach dem rätselhaften Song begann". Spontis (in German). 10 September 2019. Archived from the original on 2020-08-12. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  5. "This Mysterious Three-Minute Song Has The Internet Baffled". 2 Ocean's Vibe News. 2021-07-29. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  6. Jenke, Tyler (2019-05-27). "Can you help some internet sleuths identify a mysterious song?". Tone Deaf. Archived from the original on 2023-05-31. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
  7. "HELP US IDENTIFY THIS SONG!". 2019-07-09. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  8. "Como el viento. La historia de la canción más misteriosa de internet". Multimedios (in Spanish). 2021-05-03. Archived from the original on 2023-06-01. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
  9. "WORLD EXCLUSIVE: I HAVE OBTAINED THE 1984 SONG LIST FROM PAUL BASKERVILLE'S RADIO SHOW "MUSIK FÜR JUNGE LEUTE," PLUS THE BACKSTORY ON HOW I GOT IT". 2020-07-09. Archived from the original on 2021-03-28. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  10. FlexxonMobil (2020-07-11). "🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: PAUL BASKERVILLE LIKELY DID *NOT* PLAY THE SONG 🚨🚨🚨". r/TheMysteriousSong. Archived from the original on 2023-06-19. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  11. "The Most Mysterious Song on Twitter: "OFFICIAL: A significant discovery has been made by #themysterioussong Discord User "fliere." There is a 10KHz line in the spectrogram for all NDR 2 recordings we have access to, including the recorded broadcast of #themysterioussong. (1/2)"". 2020-12-22. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  12. "Lydia's reddit post". Reddit. u/bluuely. 2 November 2021. Archived from the original on 13 December 2021. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  13. completed-circuit1 (2019-11-28). "Dx7 used in the song. Update". r/TheMysteriousSong. Archived from the original on 2023-06-19. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  14. "Hamburg Journal: Der geheimnisvolle Song aus dem NDR Archiv | ARD Mediathek". www.ardmediathek.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2020-11-15. Retrieved 2020-12-09.
  15. "Mephisto Walz Official "Like The Wind"". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-12-06.
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